But the scenario isn't really lawless totally. Ownership of land or real estate is to be registered in that country that territory th land or real estat is part of. Nonetheless there are firms and persons in Germany I can buy from land sited in the US. To be taken serious thes firms and persons are forced to do the registration in the US for me and to prove that they have done that. If they've got the money from me and really don't do the registration for me I can take them to a german court because they have broken german laws.

To apply that to land on the moon it has to be taken into account that today no private person or firm can travel for the moon yet, that there is no government on the moon yet and that because of this there are no registration agencies on the moon. Ergo no registration is possible but noone can take the land away from Mark Rejhon too. So no law has been broken.

Bur the laws today say, that the seller mustn't sell the acres Mark Rejhon bought from him again to other persons.

But as once as private persons or firms can travel for the moon the laws might be interpreted to force the seller to secure Mark Rejhon the land he buyed.

Result: The scenario isn't as lawless as it seems on the first glance and there are property rights working.

To repeat an important point: Ownership of land on the moon is a quite different situation than ownership of the moon as a whole body. Ownership of some acres leaves land to very much people. And government authorities might go there make valid laws instead of to claim public ownership. Prevention of private ownership by the UN might be very difficult and tricky - on earth the UN cannot force any country to remove the private ownership out of the constitutions as a kind of property rights.

Bur the laws today say, that the seller mustn't sell the acres Mark Rejhon bought from him again to other persons.

No they don't! The law can't protect someone from selling land they don't own. He says that in his site, but if I don't buy land from him (thus not agreeing to his little contract), I can sell land he's already sold!

The proof of this is other sites selling the moon too, such as http://www.lunarregistry.com/ . Lunar Embassy can't contest these because he doesn't own anything to contest.

Go ask the guy at Lunar Embassy if he offers refunds if the law doesn't hold, he'll laugh you away.

This is insane. If you think this guy owns the solar system and has a right to sell it, I suggest you get your checkbook out and start buying up mars and venus, as these are also on offer now.

To sell the moon itself as a whole body is quite another case than selling a small part of the moon as the special acres Mark Rejhon has bought. He says he has bought around 2700 acres and if I'm right these 2700 acres are sited in a special crater named Lalande. The Laws today say that the seller mustn't sell these special 2700 acres in a special crater another time to another person.

But this is really only valid if only a special amount of acres sited at a special place on the moon are sold - it is not valid if the amount of acres isn't specified or if the place of these acres are not specified.

Mark Rejhon has bought only 2700 acres sited at a special place on moon but not the moon itself, not the whole moon - so the person he bought the acres from didn't sell the whole moon to him. Having done this as a consequence it is impossible for this special seller to sell the moon as a whole to somebody other because then he would sell Mark Rejhon's special acres sited at a special place another time too and this way would hurt existing laws.

I don't consider selling the moon as a whole and I didn't in earlier posts. That case seems to be nonsense from my point of view. But if there are people and firms doing so they seem to be hurting the laws but I first have to think about this nonsense-case.

A few additional considerations:

1. There never have been private persons or countries in the past claiming the whole earth as their property. So ownership on a whole planet would be a quite new case never seen before and the UN want to prevent this quite new case only.

2. Formerly in the times of the ancient Roman Empire there were wide regions on earth whithout government or country. There were tribes and nomads with something like governments in that regions - yes - but ownership of land were private only and land not privately owned wasn't by anyone and it wasn't owned public too. This is the situation on the moon, the Mars and other bodies in space today.

There are laws governing all sellers doing their business in an country on earth - they are governing the behaviour of the sellers and the sellers don't be at the moon but in an country on earth.

These laws are valid too if they sell land on other planets. From the point of view of these laws it makes no difference wether the land subject to a seller's behaviour is in another country on earth or on another planet.

The question will become acute as soon as there are private travels to the moon inluding landing at its surface. The question will have to be interpreted. What did the seller sell really? Land? Is there any seller today who has real power over any land as other sellers have power over land in the US or in Germany? No.

So the sellers really don't sell land itself on other planet. But what do they do or sell really? They may be brokers - but what is subject to their brokering? It is not land itself.

What is subject to the sale or brokerage of land on other planets today really might be a service - the service to get real power over land on another planet, the service to travel there especially to get this power.

And all this - sale regardless of what is subject to the sale, brokerage regardless of what is subject to the brokerage and service regardless of the kind of service - is really governed by the laws of the country it is taking place in and all this is taking place in such a country and not at another planet.

The last word will have the courts as once as a buyer of lunar land takes a sale to a court.

May be you are a lawyer or a student of laws - my intention wasn't to know something better but to describe a point of view.

Back in Y2K, the 2700 acre parcels were really cheap (I think about $15 or $20 or so? -- cheap enough for an April's Fool joke -- I can't quite remember the exact price. That was before they started selling smaller parcels at the same price. So I got one as a gag joke.

It's worth the certificate itself at least as a entertaining joke since it cost me only a few dollars. (It's a rather large one with a nice "old-style" map, something like 20" wide, it's not just a sheet of paper)

However, it will be interesting, if this happens:
"The last word will have the courts as once as a buyer of lunar land takes a sale to a court."

Unfortunately we can't infer when private orbital flight will be acheieved just from the x-prize competition. The technology developed for the competition cannot simply be scaled up. The heat shielding on those vehicles was not designed for re-entry. Imagine a vehicle like spaceship 1 coming back from orbit. I can picture those wings and tailbooms melting away to my knowledge, at least, there exists no serious attempt for a private manned space program geared towards orbital flight.

_________________Thank you very much Mister Roboto
For helping escape when I needed most
Thank you
Thank you

What about Starchaser? They have a fairly normal missile with a tin can on top and conventional LOX-Kero engines, they should be able to scale up when the time is right. Also, while verticle ground launch seems out of favour, at least they won't need a balloon the size of Alaska if they do scale up, which I believe they intend to do in the future.

Concerning the orbit - might all the arguments be oriented to close to NASA's launches and flights?

NASA launches huge payloads as satellites, interplanetary spacecrafts and experimental robots like Deep Space One.
The private teams first will launch much smaller spacecrafts if going to orbit. These will require much less propellant as a consequence.

NASA launches huge objects as a whole - may be the privates find ways launching them seperated into their components and parts and put all this together in orbit using nanotechnology, space-optimized tools, neuronal nets and most modern computer technologies.

After the XPRIZE is won we will have to look what Scaled Composits is going to do next I suppose.

NASA launches huge payloads as satellites, interplanetary spacecrafts and experimental robots like Deep Space One.The private teams first will launch much smaller spacecrafts if going to orbit. These will require much less propellant as a consequence.

NASA launches huge objects as a whole - may be the privates find ways launching them seperated into their components and parts and put all this together in orbit using nanotechnology, space-optimized tools, neuronal nets and most modern computer technologies.

After the XPRIZE is won we will have to look what Scaled Composits is going to do next I suppose.

Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Herr Augustin,

Heinlein's THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON in the latter half of the story showed a way to utilize several launches for one further flight. Doubtless there are other multilaunch applications. ISS is a miserable propaganda/internationalist excuse for a space station, mostly paid for out of the US pocket, but to be fair it is also a example of multi-launch to LEO technique.

Go back to the days of colonisation, an issue discussed daily here in New Zealand as many parties still feel cheated.

The European powers sailed around claiming whatever they could in the name of their governments. Possession wasn't 9/10ths of the law, it was 10/10ths and whoever had the most guns claimed sovereignty. Therefore if the land was valuable, you'd have a battle over it and the for the rest, it was a scramble to get there first.

However, there's only one moon. You bet if China lands there, they'll be considering their rights to property ownership. Luckily there doesn't yet seem to be huge financial gains from owning the moon. But let us not discount the violent, primal roots that many of us have descended from.

in between property rights are discussed in several sections of this message board.

May be that one of the most difficult aspects of property rights is the question what they are depending on.

Property rights don't depend on the things someone might have property on and they don't depend on existing ownerships too. Property rights are bound to persons and laws and constitutions.

As long as noone is living on the moon itself there cannot be any property rights on the moon as whole and not on a very small part on the moon. This will change as once as people settle there. Property rights are really required then because they the base of freedom, the base of making decisions and the base of surviving.

On the moon there is no life now - so the situation mustn't be compared to colonisation of New Zealand because in New Zealand were people living in contrary to the moon and had there own property right on the territory of New Zealand. But when the colonisation of New Zealand took place the concept "property rights" didn't exist yet.

Another aspect always to have in mind is that "property rights" doesn't mean private ownership - there are two kinds of "property rights": "public" property rights and "private" property rights. Private ownership is a private property right - but there are many property rights nothing having to do with ownership. If for example a manager of a department of a private enterprise is given a special budget to manage the department then that means that this manager has the private property right to decide what to do with this budget - but he has no private ownership on the budget and mustn't use it privately. The budget remains to be the private property of the enterprise.

So today lunar property rights needn't to be resolved - this will be required when men begin to settle there. And the property rights on what is brought to the moon from earth are resolved totally. And to establish a permanent station on the moon - for purposes of a manned Mars mission for example - will require to use raw materials of the moon I suppose. This fact is establishing property rights and their solution - but on the materials and what is made of them only and not on the moon as a whole.

The Space Exploration Timetable as Texan and you, Maverick, design it is indicating waht steps of experience are to be achievved to get the Know How and the insights required for expanding all over the solar system.

It shows what list of steps might be to be iterated during each development project - I use "iterated" or the term "iteration" in the sense here it has in software development.

As the number of steps achieved grows the number of test fields and opportunities grows more than proportionally and might lead to faster development success.

But concerning the exploration of space itself the Timetable seems far too linear I think

Space exploration is not to be reduced to distances, suborbits, orbits and interplanetary. It includes to search for advantages space is providing, the possibilities it provides that on earth doesn't exist

Consider the first manned Mars mission - the crew of this mission has to be provided water, food, medicine etc. for several months. So space exploration includes the search for possibilities tio let plants grow in space. How can radiation used for this? Is there a liitle bit terraforming within a spacship possible? Are radiation.resistant plants proper food or are they toxic? Or do they increase human resistance against radiation too?

I propose to extend the Space Exploration Timetable to waht will be done in orbit, if orbit is reached and what will be done on the moon if mankind is back there (huge radio telescope at the backside of the moon or launch site to mars or both? What else?)

May be then the estimations will become better and more detailed or more opportunities and possibilities are detected to achieve the next step and as a consequence this step is achieved faster.